In order to meet high performance requirements, rubber-based products are often designed to have high strength, stability and wear resistance. However, these highly durable products are consequently very difficult to degrade and/or recycle or reclaim.
Rubber powder or rubber crumb is the intermediate product that is used in rubber recycling. As will be appreciated by one of skill in the art, the quality of the rubber powder is critical for the production of quality reclaimed rubber products. Many processes produce plasticized recycled rubber that has highly variable chemical and physical properties and are therefore unsuitable for the production of many products.
Currently, dynamic vulcanization is the primary process for rubber powder desulphurization. However, this process requires high pressure, has high energy consumption, requires water injection and produces exhaust emissions.